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Topography of Owston Estate, Doncaster
The estate straddles a small ridge in the Magnesian limestone area of South Yorkshire, within the floodplain of the River Don. The ridge runs almost centrally through the layout of the existing estate, its high point being the feature known as Windmill Hill. The land to the east of the ridge is particularly low-lying and has, until quite recently, been liable to regular winter flooding.
In terms of the communications network, the estate is situated close to the stretch of the old Great North Road (generally followed by the line of the modern A1) between Doncaster and Pontefract and is accessed from the main road between Doncaster and Selby.
The Medieval Manor of Owston
The manor appears in the Domesday Book (1086) as ‘Austun’, suggesting a meaning of ‘Eastern Settlement’, presumably in relation to the older-established vill of Burghwallis and its satellites of Norton and Sutton in the adjacent area.
Prior to the [Norman] Conquest, the estate had been held by three Anglo-Saxon land-holders, Gluniairnn, Ulfketill and Skotakoll and comprised four carucates of land with the potential for supporting three plough teams. The three pre-conquest tenants were replaced by one Alfred, who held the estate from Ilbert de Lacy – one of William the Conqueror’s tenants-in-chief who had been granted large tracts of the West Riding, which constituted the Honour of Pontefract. Alfred’s holding consisted of one carucate of land (about 100-120 acres) held in demesne (i.e. cultivated for his own use), and his tenantry of twelve villeins (villagers) and five bordars (smallholders) who between them held four carucates, eight acres of meadow and a tract of woodland measuring ½ league long and ½ wide. The estate’s value before the Conquest had been assessed in the 60s. but in 1086, it was worth 20s. less, probably reflecting the Conquerors deliberate ravaging of the Yorkshire countryside following the rebellions of the 1070s.
No church is mentioned in Domesday, and the Anglo-Saxon estate would probably have been part of an extended parish based on Burghwallis, whose church includes extensive remains of late-Saxon or early-Norman masonry. The surviving herring-bone masonry in the fabric of Owston church, analogous to the local examples of Malty, Marr and Brodsworth, suggests that it was probably built within fifty years of the Conquest, and its close proximity to the present hall makes it likely that it was established by one of the early Norman lords next to his manor house, an arrangement particularly common in this area of strong, consolidated lordship (Hey, 1979: 83, 86).
The history of the estate between the early Norman period and the later Middle Ages is obscure, but by the late 13th century, it was in the hands of Humphrey de Veilley, who in turn passed it on to William de Hamilton, by the terms of a charter of 1295. Within forty years of this transfer, the manor had devolved into the hands of the Crown, probably due to forfeiture, and by the end of the 14th century, through its grant by Edward III to his son, John of Gaunt, had become part of the estates of the Duchy of Lancaster (Hunter, 1828: 478).
In 1396, the duke granted the advowson of the church to the Premonstratensian canons of Welbeck (Notts.), and in 1418, the Archbishop of York, Henry Bowet, instituted the church as a perpetual vicarage and decreed that the incumbent should be provided with a manse consisting of a hall, chamber, kitchen and stable with an adjoining garden or close, all of which was to be provided by the canons of Welbeck in their capacity as appropriators of the greater tithe (Hunter, 1828: 478). It is possible that a fragment of 15th-century glass depicting a clerk in monastic habit, which survives in one of the windows of the south aisle of the church, is an indication of the church’s dependence on Welbeck Abbey.
Various incised grave slabs, dating from the 13th and early 14th centuries and now built into the fabric of the church, are probably to be associated with lords of the manor. Three chantries were established in the church, the latest being that in honour of the Virgin Mary, which appears to have been built by Robert Hatfield in memory of his wife, who had died at the turn of the 15th century. The pair are commemorated by a fine incised brass now located at the western end of the nave. The terms of the chantry foundations appear to have included the support of a schoolmaster; a number of sources suggest the existence of a thriving school at Owston by the end of the Middle Ages (Hey, 1979: 95; Hunter, 1828: 481; Hey, 1986: 116-117).
From a population of under twenty households at the time of the Domesday Book, Owston developed into an important manorial settlement. Tax returns of 1343 record the names of fifty heads of freeholding families and ninety individuals were assessed for the poll tax of 1379, including a dozen who were of sufficient means to be liable for above the standard rate. However, Owston appears to have shared the fate of a great number of English villages which suffered drastic population decline in the later Middle Ages for a variety of reasons ranging from the effects of the Black Death to the deliberate clearing of peasants from the lands of lords wanting to turn their estates into deer-parks.
By the turn of the 16th century, the village was dominated by a single yeoman farming family, the Adams-es, with only a few smaller freeholders surviving in their shadow (Hey, 1979: 127).
